When cacao beans are crushed, they make two things: a fatty, pale liquid called cocoa butter, and dark brown bits called cocoa solids. The cocoa solids are what give chocolate its dark color and rich, slightly bitter flavor. White chocolate skips the cocoa solids completely and just uses the cocoa butter.
Mix that cocoa butter with sugar, milk powder, and vanilla and you get white chocolate. It tastes sweet and creamy, but you’ll never get that deep chocolatey flavor - there’s nothing in it to provide one. That’s also why white chocolate melts so quickly: cocoa butter softens easily in your hand.
White chocolate was invented by the Swiss company Nestle in 1936. In some countries, food laws are strict about what can be called “chocolate” - it usually needs to contain a minimum amount of cocoa solids. By those rules, white chocolate technically isn’t chocolate at all. Don’t tell its fans, though.
